The government has sought a loan of more than $350 million from the World Bank to boost its power sector and build pipelines to transmit natural gas to help ease its power crisis, a senior official said yesterday.

"We are almost in the final stage (of getting the loan approved) and the money will be utilised to implement a number of projects in the energy sector, including setting up a 300-megawatt (MW) power plant," a senior official of the Ministry of Energy said.